Warp Power May Soon Add Extra Life to Your Cell Phone and iPod Batteries

By Pete Brown - February 25, 2009, 11:04 am

Assistant
Professor Roman Lysecky of the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering has been awarded a grant of more than $400,000 by the
National Science Foundation to develop high-performance customizable
computer chips.

Lysecky’s
research will focus on the emerging field of warp processing, which uses
high-performance computer chips called field-programmable gate arrays,
or FPGAs.

Star Trek
fans should note that Lysecky will not be setting up a “warp core” in
his Embedded Systems Design Laboratory. Although warp processing
certainly is about achieving very high speeds, it is also about
achieving gains in power conservation, but exceeding the speed of light
is not part of Lysecky’s research.

“The
original focus of warp processing was strictly performance,” said
Lysecky. “My research proposal expands warp processing into a new domain
of low power.” Some systems don’t actually need to be faster. Putting a
warp processor in a cell phone, for instance, would not improve call
quality. “The chip in a cell phone is already fast enough,” said
Lysecky. “Using a warp processor doesn’t improve the quality of the call
itself, it just leaves a few idle cycles behind. However, from a power
perspective, there is a noticeable impact in the form of extended
battery life.”

Computer chips
such as FPGAs are hardware, and hardware typically is not programmable.
It just does what it was built to do. FPGAs, however, are computer chips
that can be programmed after manufacture—hence “field-programmable.”

FPGAs work in a
parallel fashion, which means they can execute thousands of instructions
simultaneously. Software, on the other hand, works sequentially and
executes instructions one after the other. “This is very efficient from a
computational point of view,” said Lysecky. “We can give hardware the
flexibility of software so that hardware can be programmed on the fly,”
said Lysecky. “It takes a matter of seconds to configure how the chip
will work.”

Warp processing
allows hardware programming to be integrated into software development.
This is significant because it reduces dependence on hardware designers,
who are in short supply. “Warp processing hides FPGAs from software
developers,” said Lysecky. “But it allows them to extract the power and
performance inherent in hardware programming, which speeds up
development, reduces cost, and creates better performing software that
uses less energy.”

Lysecky was
awarded the 5-year grant of $415,000 under the NSF’s prestigious Faculty
Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. The program supports junior
faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding
research, excellent education and the integration of education and
research.

In-Stat, a market
research company based in Scottsdale, Ariz., predicted in a 2006 report
that the global market for FPGAs would increase from $1.9 billion in
2005 to $2.75 billion by 2010. In-Stat estimates that communications and
industrial applications will account for 77 percent of the market
share.